Golf seemed to 'just die'

Norma Levin and her QC husband, David, were just outside the South Australian town of Murray Bridge when their car seemed to ''just die''.

03 June 2013

Norma Levin and her QC husband, David, were just outside the South Australian town of Murray Bridge when their car seemed to ''just die''.

One minute Ms Levin was behind the wheel travelling at 110km/h, heading towards Adelaide. The next minute the Volkswagen Golf she was driving lost all power. Surrounded by other cars travelling at the speed limit, Ms Levin managed to steer onto the road shoulder. Mr Levin hit the emergency warning button.

In retrospect, they were lucky, says Ms Levin: there weren't too many trucks around them and they had a place to escape off the road. ''Because we'd had problems with the car before I wasn't totally gobsmacked, but I thought 'Oh my god, the electronics have failed'.

''You start to think what might have happened. It was unnerving. Suddenly I was going 110 on cruise control and then everything suddenly just failed.''

The Levins' car is an automatic diesel Golf. The week after the trip to Adelaide, the car was due to be serviced as part of a ''campaign'' to fix the injectors. Volkswagen Australia says it is not a safety problem, although mechanics who have spoken to Fairfax Media say that if the injectors fail, the car will stop.

When the Levins' car underwent a complete check after the incident, no fault was found. The injectors were fixed as part of the service campaign and there have been no other incidents. Mr Levin believes the car's deceleration related to the fault the campaign was designed to fix. ''The VW people seemed to think it was the campaign issue,'' he said.